keep calm and carry on

Well, I just finished the song and already let it out into the world, you can find it on the Reverbnation profile and widgets, on Bandcamp or download the MP3 directly with this link.

But for your convenience, here is an embedded player from Soundcloud so you can hear it immediately while still reading this text:

This is the first Downtempo track I produce, and it is quite different from my previous songs, especially because it is the first that is almost completely made from samples. Exception are the voice takes and the historical recording medleys.

As I already explained in the first post, the idea inspiring this song came from an historical poster:

Keep Calm And Carry On

It gave face to a campaign that the british government started during World War II, to try and keep its population away from panic and fear.

While one could say that the message is not totally wrong, they certainly did came close to what we call propaganda and I think it is quite ironic to tell people to keep calm and carry on while there are bombs hitting the houses one street away from you…

So I found this story quite interesting for its controversy and also liked the classic poster, which has since become public domain and been used in many variations and even colours on tshirts, cups, whatever…

My idea then was that I would record as many different people and voices as possible, saying that sentence over and over again, mixed into a track that has a nice and relaxing harmony/melody, while then, from time to time, suddenly creating a shocking contrast with a wild medley of authentic historical news recordings from WWII and 9/11…

The message? It’s upon you… you can choose between two:

1) Times today might be better then during WWII, but still things often get so bad you feel tempted to stick your head into the sand like the ostrich and just repeat over-and-over: Just keep calm and carry on.

2) If you don’t like the idea of being compared to an ostrich, you can think of it as an ironic, critical demonstration of how wrong that sentence really is: one moment you’re listening to a voice saying it with calm, neutral intonation, the next moment, voices are all joined together, becoming menacing and as if that wouldn’t be enough, you suddenly feel you’re in the middle of all the terrible happenings from September 11… So, do NOT keep calm and carry on, DO SOMETHING…

Hope you like it, and if yes, don’t forget to leave a comment with your feedback and share the track with your friends 🙂

Some time ago I had the inspiration for the next song, and have since then been collecting some ideas and material.
One of these things are little voice snippets I’ve been recording or asking people to record, of always the same words, trying to get the most variated voices and some different accents, too.

Those words are “Keep calm and carry on”, a sentence written on a famous poster of the british government from 1939. You can read the whole story here.
Although those words definitely were said in a little ironic way at the time, I think they aren’t that wrong at all, it only depends on the context, sometimes it really is the best thing you can do, othertimes obviously not.

But as I like this kind of polemic material and one day happened to see the poster:

printed in a magazine my dad was reading, I thought: “that’s it!” and decided to use that as inspiration for my next song.
I don’t want to tell you any more details so not to spoil the surprise, but one thing I can add: it’s going to be very much on the electronic side of music, quite different from the other songs I produced until now.
And I’d also like to launch a little invitation: If you’d like to contribute, you can send me your own recording of those 5 words, quality isn’t important, I actually like the idea of some of the takes having different sound qualities or even background noises.
The only important part is that the sentence has to be said in a natural, almost neutral way.
Send your take in mp3 format to this email adress:

joydivision “at” sapo “dot” pt

(substitute “at” with @ and “dot” with . and remove the spaces; this is against spammers)

The name of people contributing with their voices to this project will naturally appear in the credits. So, stay tuned to updates, and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog if you haven’t yet 🙂